


Body Aches

by amorekay



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Angst, Dark, F/M, M/M, Surreal, Threesome, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-20
Updated: 2011-09-20
Packaged: 2017-10-23 22:02:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/255483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amorekay/pseuds/amorekay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is what Ariadne would have dreamed: all of Paris abandoned, beautiful buildings caving in as their scaffolding rips apart at the joints, her heart torn out from the center.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Body Aches

**Author's Note:**

> The combination of hearing The White Stripes' 300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues, having the prompt from a friend for 'Cobb/Ariadne/Arthur dark zombie!au (though it didn't end up exactly an au, but, hm) and my brain at two in the morning.

**One thing's for sure: in that graveyard  
I'm gonna have the shiniest pair of shoes**

 

The gun hits the back of Arthur’s head first, going too fast for reality and still cracking his skull loud as fuck. Dom has a second to curse the nervous system’s infallible perception of pain before Arthur’s bullet collides with his temple and he-

-jolts into consciousness. The room is quiet except for the whirring of a humidifier in the corner. Ariadne looks at him with quiet eyes and then looks back at the mark, a man so sallow he looks like he’s been bathing in nicotine. Arthur is still asleep. Dom cusses.

This job has gotten dangerously out of hand, with even his attempt at a patch job blowing up in pieces as the projections formed into an organized gang, blank faced and deadly, yelling about an epidemic and massing on them more ruthlessly then he's seen since Mal-- he chokes back the thought, thinks of another: there's still time left in the dream. Arthur is sleeping soundly.

He panics.

 

(This is what Ariadne would have dreamed: all of Paris abandoned, beautiful buildings caving in as their scaffolding rips apart at the joints, her heart torn out from the center. A ferris wheel left in the middle of the carnival ground, and Ariadne starts climbing it to the top. As she gets one sneaker up onto the structure’s bones and heaves herself off the ground, there is a yell.

Her thumb bangs against rusty metal. On the ground, a crowd of people are moving, massing together in and out like they’re attempting formations, a dance troupe, an army brigade, until she can see that their skin is peeling away at the core and red muscle and pink organs peak through. The place smells like old blood and sweet rot, and she glances to the front of the line and she sees Arthur adjusting his tie, flesh falling off his wrist in sheathes, and a rib sticking out from the tear in his suit.

She falls off the ferris wheel. He tells her, “The time is not precise.”

She shoots him in the face. )

 

They run as soon as Arthur opens his eyes, with Cobb hailing down a taxi before they have time to even catch their breaths. The chemist, trailing behind them, looking for all the world like she wishes she’d never signed up for this one-time offer, has put her coat on inside out.

On the sidewalk, Arthur throws up. His thoughts are all jumbled up and the pain is still ringing in his ears, a migraine coming on fast and violent even as the phantom sensation of his bones breaking and splintering fades. He spits and expects to see blood, but it’s just bile and saliva. Dom says, “come on,” and ushers Ariadne into the cab, while the chemist shakes her head and turns the other direction. “It’s dangerous,” Dom calls after her, but she doesn’t look back.

Arthur pulls himself up from the pavement and Dom grabs onto his shoulder, tight. “Arthur,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

If Dom had dreams, no one would die in them. Ariadne looks like she wants to kiss him as she agrees.

 

(In Arthur’s dream, there would be a newspaper on his table with a date that keeps changing, and a crossword puzzle filled in with words in French and Spanish, half hidden under a scribbled note to pick up the dry cleaning. Dom would be there, and Mal, too, and their children laughing from the bathroom down the hall as they try to wash the dog. Ariadne would give him a sweet smile from the corner behind her textbook, and Eames would be yelling for him to open the door because it’s freezing out here. A hand would graze the across the back of his neck, and-

-the streets would be filled with a sickly sweet stench as the blow knocks him on his side. The men in masks are carting off bodies by the dozen but they keep waking up, and he can’t breathe before the needle stabs into his neck and tendrils of vaccine uncoil in his blood. He closes his eyes and-

-Dom’s kissing him slowly, eyes open, as Arthur drops a sugar cube into his tea and calmly watches it dissolve. )

 

When everything falls apart they find themselves in Prague.

 

He’s sitting on the bathroom floor with his head in his hands when the light falls across his feet. There’s a silhouette in the door way, and the sudden brightness blinds him enough that he can’t tell if it’s Dom or Ariadne, until Dom sinks down next to him and presses a kiss to his neck. Arthur blinks, but the silhouette in the doorway doesn’t dissolve.

“Come on,” one or another of them says.

Arthur lays down on the single bed in this dingy hotel room in a country none of them call home, and Ariadne leans flush against his chest and Dom curls behind her. Arthur feels feverish and chilled, Ariadne’s pale hand like ice against his skin and Dom’s haunted gaze burning in the shadows. They clutch on to each other for dear life, because this is all the reality they have left.

(there is a sickly sweet smell in the air-)

Arthur closes his eyes.


End file.
